With its latest mini-series, Marvel Studios introduces a hero who needs to battle himself, before he can lay his hands on the villains. Moon Knight’s official entry into the MCU gives us a flawed character, not the one who is tormented by his past adventures like the previous heroes, but the one who is trying to figure out and remember what he has done. In the first episode, we see a mild-mannered Steven Grant, who lives a mundane life and has a mundane job for which he is always late.
He also chains himself to sleep so that he doesn’t find himself in unfamiliar places and forgets about his dates, or shows up to them two days late. After landing in an unknown place and being pursued by armed men, he finds himself in the possession of an ancient compass that apparently shows the direction of the tomb of the Egyptian God Ammit.
Here we are properly introduced to the anti-hero of the series, Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke) and his clan. Steven witnesses Harrow judge a woman for her sins and kill her for the crimes she might commit in future. Not knowing how the ancient Egyptian God cleanses the world by punishing people even before they have committed a crime, Grant hands them over the compass that is essential in finding Ammit’s grave. However, he is stopped by something, and a voice in his head is constantly giving him instructions. After having a blackout, he finds himself amid a fight scene. Several blackouts later, he escapes the fight scene, killing or injuring all his opponents but he has no idea how.
Later, when he is guarding the museum at night, he is attacked by mystic creatures. Here, it is revealed to him and the audience that he has Dissociative Identity Disorder and shares a body with Marc Spector, a former mercenary. He is also the avatar of Khonshu- the Egyptian God of the moon and vengeance. Marc needs to take over Grant in order to battle out their adversaries.
The first episode of Mohamed Diab’s Moon Knight keeps the audience and the main character in the dark and it is with him that we find out what is going on with him. Moon Knight’s character first made its appearance in Marvel Comics back in 1975 with Werewolf by Night #32. The comics introduced us to Marc Spector’s three identities, Steven Grant, Jake Lockley, and Mr Knight. The series primarily seems to deal with Spector and Grant and the conflict between the two.
The first episode takes its time to build the plot around his mental illness and shows how difficult he finds it to navigate through a day. His illness also makes him and us question whether his adventures as Spector have any truth to them or those are his imagination.
However, the most exciting part about this upcoming series is its detachment from the core MCU heroes. Marc Spector’s character and its journey is something that is being built from scratch, as the studio did with, say, Tony Stark and Iron Man’s character. The fresh adventures that he’ll be embarking upon leave the scope open for MCU to bring more new characters from the comics to life.
Moon Knight is the sixth series in the fourth phase of MCU following Wanda Vision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If, and Hawkeye.
Also starring May Calamawy, Gaspard Ulliel, and F. Murray Abraham as Khonshu, Moon Knight will be streaming on Disney+ Hotstar from March 30.
